The People We Keep(45)

Bodie comes out for a refill on his hot chocolate. His fingers are black, which means he’s been in the kitchen sketching instead of washing dishes. When he sees Anna, he tucks the red stirrer straw he’s always chewing behind his ear, leans on the counter so he’s totally in her face, and says, “Can I help you?” in this completely gross fake-manly voice.

“Half-caff skim latte with sugar-free vanilla, please,” she says.

Bodie stares at her perfectly painted Valentine mouth and bites his bottom lip. “Large?”

“Small.”

He wipes his charcoal fingers on his jeans and makes her a medium, looking over to smile at her more than he’s watching what he’s doing. I worry he’ll burn himself again, like he did last week when some girl with blond dreadlocks and big boobs whispered her order in his ear like it was a secret only he could know.

When Bodie hands Anna her drink, he makes sure their fingers touch and says, “Two twenty-five” which is what a small costs.

She hands him a five, but I’m still working on the register tape. I’ve almost got it, but some of the paper is bunched on one side, so I have to use a knife to finish jamming it through.

“Oh, keep the change,” she says, like it’s no big deal to pay more than twice what she’s been charged. All I have left to do is close the register lid, so she wouldn’t have to wait more than two seconds.

“Thanks,” Bodie says. He grabs a pencil from under the counter. “Hey, do you think I could give you a call some—” but she’s already out the door.

I almost feel bad for him, but then he says, “Pilgrim, can you make me a hot chocolate? You make them better than me,” like I’m supposed to swoon. Like he still believes in the power of his charm, even after he got shut down.

When I make his hot chocolate, I kind of hate myself.

On the way home, when I stop at the drugstore to buy a tube of dark red lipstick, I hate myself a little bit more. But when I get home, put the lipstick on, and study my reflection in the bathroom mirror, I love the way my lips look like a Valentine and I can’t stop staring.

After I get the lipstick perfect, I pull my hair back in one big twisty braid that falls over my shoulder, because Adam told me once that it looks pretty that way. And it does. I don’t look like the old April anymore. I look like maybe I could really fit here. Like this is the place where my life gets to start, and maybe I’m ready for it.

I hear Adam’s footsteps on the stairs and my heart bangs around in my chest in a good way.

“Lucy, I’m ho-ome,” Adam calls as he opens the door.

I stand my lipstick tube up on the shelf Adam cleared for me in the medicine cabinet and run out to meet him.

“Hey,” he says, hugging my waist. He spins me around and kisses my neck. “Ready to get a tree?”

“Yeah.” I kiss him back, and my lips leave a big red smudge on his face. He doesn’t wipe it off.



* * *



Adam drives us out of the city through wide-open farmland where the sky looks big and the land is just arching out in front of us. He turns down a dirt road lined with short, fat pine trees and parks in front of a rickety white farmhouse.

“Stay here,” he says, “I’ll be right back.”

He leaves the car running for me so the heat’s still on, sprints up the porch steps.

A tall, skinny guy with curly hair down his back comes around from the side of the house, an axe slung over his shoulder. He’s wearing a green elf hat.

“Hey, man!” I can hear Adam say. The guy puts his arm around Adam and they hug, bumping shoulders and shaking hands at the same time. Adam slaps some cash into the guy’s hand, and the guy passes his axe to Adam. They walk to the far end of the porch and the guy points to the field of trees on the side of the house. Adam nods. They shake hands again.

Adam gets back in the car, resting the axe carefully on the back seat. “Okay. Billy says the trees on the far end of the lot are the best.”

“I like his hat,” I say.

Adam laughs. He drives us further down the bumpy dirt road until we can’t see the farmhouse anymore and it’s just me and him and this miniature forest, like we’re in a fairy tale. It’s starting to snow, even though there are hardly any clouds. We walk around, holding hands, looking at trees from every angle as if we’re making the most important of decisions.

When my teeth start to chatter, Adam takes his hat off and drops it on my head. “You can wait in the car if you want,” he says.

“No, I’m fine.”

He kisses me, and then we decide that the tree we’re kissing in front of should be our tree, even though it’s a little sparse on one side.

“Are you sure?” Adam says.

I nod. “It’s part of our history now.”

Adam walks to the car and comes back with the axe. It’s that time of night just before it gets dark when the light is orange, and everything looks brighter, and seeing him chopping at our Christmas tree, looking golden, his breath forming clouds, makes me wish I took pictures or painted or had some way of keeping all of this in my mind exactly as it is so I’ll never forget.



* * *



When we get home, Adam cuts the rope on the car and we haul the tree up the stairs together. It’s heavy and we’re clumsy and the needles scratch my hands, but it smells like a whole entire forest right in our stairwell. We get to the top of the stairs and then realize we should have unlocked the door to the apartment first. Adam put the keys back in his pocket after he unlocked the downstairs door.